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Re: "Josephus" inkwells?
David Crowder wrote:
>
> With all this talk of Josephus and his inkwells ...
> So while it is good to wonder about an unstained inkwell, how do we explain
> the sloppy state of the Isaiah scroll in light of the words that actually rolled
> off Josephus' pen?
Surely there is no serious (amateur or professional) scholar who thinks
that Josephus wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? All this because of a seal found with the
name of Joseph? Joseph was a very common name in the 1st century. There was probably
100,000 Josephs (including Caiaphas, Jesus' young brother, Barnabas, Barsabbas,
Arimathea) in Palestine and perhaps 300,000 ben-Josephs. Is the seal inscribed
with Mattatyahu ben Yosef, which was Josephus name at the time of the Roman war?
Was Josephus about 300 years old when he died? He would have to be to have
written the corpus of the DSS.
Your point on the Isaiah scroll is well taken, David, but even more pregnant
is the issue of it's age (125-100 BCE).
There seems to be a common belief that the DSS were all placed in the
Judean Desert caves at one time in 68-70 CE. It is much more likely that these caves
were used as genizehs for over a century...and not necessarily just by Essenes.
Jack Kilmon
Houston
JPMan@accesscomm.net